If a television drama were made about a local manufacturing company, the story might go like this:

In the basement of their family home, three brothers who once worked at a local shoe factory start a manufacturing business now called JSI Store Fixtures. The business grows and moves to a neighboring town. A few years later, however, the shoe factory closes down, putting more than 100 people out of work.

Economic development officials are called in and local residents fret about the future of the town and their families. But the three brothers, needing room for their still-growing enterprise, move back to town into the empty factory and within five years employ the same number of people who worked for the shoe company when it closed up shop, including their former boss.

The name for such a drama, of course, would have to be “JSI: Milo.”

More compelling than any fictional tale, however, is that this story is true. Three Awalt brothers – twins Terry and Barry and their older brother Mark – now operate a supermarket display company in the same former Dexter Shoe factory on Park Street in Milo where they, and their mother before them, once were employed.

Even more important, the business is thriving and providing good jobs to local residents at a time when global competition has driven many manufacturing jobs overseas.

Mark Awalt, who is one year older than his brothers, said during a recent interview that JSI was started 14 years ago after Terry, 43, was laid off from his job with a refrigeration equipment company. As a side business, Terry’s former employer had fabricated some produce displays for supermarkets but Terry recognized that there was a better way to do it, Awalt said.

Using his old business contacts, Terry got a deal from Hannaford in 1991 to make 25 pine slat display boxes with hand-held power tools in the basement of the family home, a quarter-mile away from where JSI is now, according to Awalt. Once assembled, the bins were painted and stained in the living room.

The company’s operations have changed significantly since then. Awalt, who in 1997 left his job at Maine Yankee to become vice president of the growing family business, said JSI expects to have nearly $14 million worth of sales for 2005.

“Giant Foods in Pennsylvania will do between $750,000 and $1 million a year. [Price Chopper in New York] is doing $3 million to $4 million a year,” he said. “We just did $5 million [in sales] in three months, and industry standards say it can’t be done.”

This year, the company also expects to sell $300,000 worth a unique curved foam display called Banana Bed, which it designed to minimize bruising to displayed bananas, Awalt said. It also is developing similar foam trays, roughly 9 inches wide by 12 inches long, that can help protect other displayed produce.

The size of JSI’s orders can range from one Banana Bed for a single store in western Canada to $100,000 worth of displays for a major U.S. company, according to Awalt.

“If you count every unit, it’s in the tens of thousands” of display units that the company produces annually, he said. “We’re going to sell to over 100 customers this year.”

When JSI moved back to Milo in 2000 after spending four years in Howland, it gained 25,000 square feet of space. Since then, the company has grown from 35 to 105 employees and is now courting Target as a potential client. By May of next year, JSI hopes to expand into a 15,000-square-foot addition that is being built onto the 60,000-square-foot former shoe factory, he said.

“We’re growing very fast,” Awalt said.

Jane Jones, Milo’s town manager, said recently the significance of JSI moving back to Milo after Dexter Shoe left cannot be overstated. Around the same time, Bangor Hydro moved out of Milo and paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket were having financial difficulties.

“There was one thing after another,” Jones said. “When [JSI] came, we were just about at the low ebb.”

At first Milo residents reacted cautiously to the firm’s relocation but now they claim a certain degree of bragging rights about the company’s success, according to Jones. Because the Awalts are a local family and because of JSI’s growing role in the community, the people of Milo have developed a “deeper sense of ownership” of JSI, she said.

“Five years later, a lot of that guarded optimism has turned into full-blown optimism,” Jones said.

Mark Awalt, who last year was named Maine’s Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration, said JSI’s success is no fluke. He and his brothers learned early on to have a strong work ethic, both from their experience working for Dexter Shoe and from Jean and Clayton Johndro, their mother and stepfather, he said. Clayton Johndro, 59, used to work with Barry Awalt for Guilford Industries and now works with all his stepsons in JSI’s front office.

When hiring new workers, JSI looks for people who share this same work ethic, according to Mark Awalt. During the busy summer season, when many supermarket companies are renovating or building new stores, JSI employees often have to put in long hours to make sure orders are finished and shipped on time, he said.

“We all grew up here,” Awalt said while walking through the plant among finished display pieces waiting to be shipped. “We were taught at a young age [that] if you want something, you better go work.”

Although he and his brothers always are concerned about competition, Awalt said they are confident JSI will not end up like Dexter Shoe, Great Northern Paper or light bulb maker Osram Sylvania, all of which have gone out of business or moved their production facilities out of the country.

JSI makes specialized products, not for mass consumption but for a limited clientele that places custom orders, he said. Chinese manufacturers might be able to make shoes, paper or light bulbs cheaper than their American counterparts, he said, but they cannot be as responsive or meet frequent last-second requests for order changes as JSI does.

“Hannaford doesn’t buy cookie-cutter stuff,” Awalt said.

And in an industry where retailers constantly are looking for ways to compete with low-price leader Wal-Mart, the demand for new display racks is consistently high, he said.

“The supermarket industry is very dynamic,” Awalt said. “The merchandising scheme is always changing.”

When asked for a comment about JSI, Hannaford Bros. spokeswoman Karen Epstein said the supermarket company has a policy of not endorsing its vendors. She did say, however, that Hannaford demands a high standard from all the firms that work with the company.

“If they are still working for us, you can bet that their quality is good,” Epstein said.

Jack Cashman, commissioner of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, said recently that he was in between stints as a public official in 2000 when he helped JSI find a new business to take over the buildings it was vacating in Howland. He said a couple of federal development grants made it easier for JSI to move back to Milo and for a lobster-trap manufacturing business to expand into the fixture firm’s former space.

“You had a situation where you had a couple of hard-hit areas in the state,” Cashman said. “That was a real win-win for Maine.”

The specialty manufacturing strategies of both companies, though they haven’t replaced the 23,000 commodity manufacturing jobs that have left Maine since 2000, have helped lessen the blow of the sector’s decline, he said.

“JSI is a great example of how you can maintain a manufacturing presence in a niche market,” Cashman said.

Paul Bradeen, who managed the Dexter Shoe plant for 34 years, was the Awalts’ boss when they were employees at the factory in the 1980s. He said he had no idea those roles would be reversed someday and that he’d be their production manager.

Bradeen said he has recovered from the sad feeling he had in 2000 when he last locked the door of the shuttered shoe plant. He said his spirits revived when JSI moved into the facility and helped re-energize the community only six months after Dexter left town.

“There’s a nice ring to machinery running if you have manufacturing in your blood,” Bradeen said. “You just love that sound.”